Chauvin: The Charcoal Drawings

Jean-Gabriel Chauvin (1889–1976), known as Chauvin, is an artist who helped define modern sculpture, alongside Brancusi and Arp. He developed abstract volumes, on the threshold of figuration, in wood, stone and bronze. Renowned for sculptures held in prestigious museums, he also produced a body of charcoal drawings, less well known yet remarkably evocative. Let us explore the diversity and depth of his formal research.

Jean-Gabriel Chauvin, Sans titre 3, stone sculpture, 1945.

Chauvin the sculptor

Chauvin is a major figure of twentieth-century art and one of the first artists to create an abstract sculpture (La Toilette, 1909). His work on purity of form and the expression of volume helped define modern abstract sculpture.

His sculptural output spans 1909 to 1962 and comprises several phases, all linked by a pared-down, personal style that is instantly recognisable. Some of his sculptures are figurative and imbued with a symbolism reminiscent of ancient sculpture. Others suggest a connection with the real world, evoking the human body and anatomy. But most of his sculpture explores a new relationship with reality, one that shaped the canons of abstract sculpture.

Chauvin’s work has gradually come to be seen as an important synthesis of the art of his century, alongside the sculptors Brancusi, Laurens and Arp.

Jean-Gabriel Chauvin was also a photographer and took the pictures of most of his sculptures himself. He favoured a frontal or three-quarter view, a plain background and carefully worked lighting. The staging is sober, even austere. The artist’s eye is of course focused on the sculpture, but the photograph is not a mere record: it becomes a work in its own right.

Jean-Gabriel Chauvin, Sans titre 2, ebony sculpture, 1929. Photograph by the artist.

This iconic Chauvin sculpture, which featured on the cover of the exhibition L’Ombre Atomique in 2021, offers a synthesis of his artistic output: the search for pure form, abstract volumes and perfect symmetry. Chauvin sought an effective view, photographing the work from a slight angle, with carefully worked light, against a plain background.

Chauvin’s charcoal drawings

Jean-Gabriel Chauvin, Sans titre, charcoal drawing, c. 1940.

Chauvin was also a virtuoso draughtsman, particularly in charcoal. His compositions show the same detachment from pure figuration and the same desire to move towards abstraction. In the drawing above, the sinuous forms are rigorously constructed, yet seem to spring from a spontaneous gesture.

The composition recalls Boccioni’s research into the fluidity of the many-faceted human body. Each detail of the work is a small abstract composition in itself, together forming a whole that is full of movement and yet harmonious.

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, bronze sculpture, 1913.

But the comparison ends there: Chauvin had no known political agenda and effaced himself behind his work, belonging to no movement or group of artists. He preferred the solitude of his studio, where he filled hundreds of sheets of paper, to the social whirl of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, then the centre of artistic and literary modernity.

Soft and friable, charcoal can render a wide variety of textures, from fine, delicate lines to broader, bolder strokes. Combined with a highly expressive gesture, and depending on the pressure applied and the blending and rubbing techniques used, it allows beautiful variations of light and darkness.

Key facts

Born in Rochefort in 1889, Chauvin devoted himself entirely to his art, and little is known of his private life.

Recognition of his work in his lifetime was crowned by a monograph by Christian Zervos in 1960. Two years later he represented France, alongside Serge Poliakoff, at the 31st Venice Biennale. His sculpture also led to public commissions in the 1930s, including the bronze Fontaine lumineuse for the swimming pool of the ocean liner Normandie and the 11-metre concrete sculpture Signal for the 1937 World’s Fair.

The artist died in 1976, leaving a deep mark on modern abstraction and a body of high-quality charcoal drawings that still awaits discovery.

Jean-Gabriel Chauvin, Sans titre, charcoal, c. 1940.

Chauvin’s drawings bear neither title nor date, only the artist’s handwritten signature.

The catalogue raisonné of the drawings

Galerie Le Coin des Arts is closely linked to Jean-Gabriel Chauvin, both the man and the artist. Its founder, Thaddée Poliakoff, wishes to promote this seminal, intimate yet universal body of work. To that end, the gallery is preparing the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s drawings.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any addition to the catalogue or any enquiry.

Thaddée Poliakoff
info@lecoindesarts.com